Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
Keeping the Flame at Van Gelder Studio
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
On March 24, Wynton Marsalis will release his fifth Blue Note recording, He And She, which combines spoken word and music.
He And She is about the relationship between a man and a woman. The album began with words, not music, though it was music that brought forth the words. Marsalis had been listening to Max Roach’s Jazz in ¾ Time, along with pieces by Duke Ellington, like “Lady Mac” from Such Sweet Thunder, work that explored waltz tempo in a jazz context. Roach’s classic album features “Valse Hot,” which, explains Marsalis is “a Sonny Rollins piece, a jazz waltz that I started to play when I was in high school.” That tune set off a spark: “I began to contemplate the shuffle rhythm, that the shuffle rhythm is the combination of a waltz feeling and a march feeling, and I thought it would be good for me to do an album of waltzes. I had written a couple before—one was for a ballet by Twyla Tharp, inspired by the Matisse painting, The Dance. I was thinking about waltzes and how in Vienna today younger people still dance the waltz, a waltz season is still a part of their social calendar. From there, I began to consider the ritual of courtship. The waltz is a courtship dance and at one time it was considered to be risqué. Now, of course, it’s genteel. Then I started to think about men and women, our relationships.”
More info: bluenote.com
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
Trio aRT with its avalanche of instrumentation: from left, Pheeroan akLaff, Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer.
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Mark Masters, right, with Billy Harper.
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